Black Cherry

Black cherry trees are common in the older forests of the Nature Park, along the Rail Trail. The most distinctive feature of cherry trees is their dark bark, broken up into small squares, almost looking like roof shingles. They produce small cherries which are edible but bitter-tasting.

Classsification:
Kingdom: Plantae
Division: Magnoliophyta
Class: Magnoliopsida
Order: Rosales
Family: Rosaceae (rose family)
Genus species: Prunus serotina Ehrh.

Leaves:
Leaves are shiny dark green on top, often look glossy
Oblong-elliptical to lance-shaped
2-5” long, 1-2” wide.
1 to 2 red glands at base of leaf
Finely serrate on margins
Lighter green on the bottom with some hair.
Turn yellow and red in the fall.

Bark:
Dark gray, scaly bark.
Bark of older trees looks like "burnt potato chips" or dark roof shingles.
Inner bark is reddish, bitter and aromatic.
Bark of younger trees looks smooth, reddish-brown to nearly black, distinctly marked with horizontal lenticels

Flowers:
1/4” wide
Several rounded white petals arranged in racemes on short stems.
Blooms in late spring or early summer.

Fruit:
Cherries are 3/8” in diameter.
Dark red, nearly black, juicy, but slightly bitter, and are edible.
Ripen in late summer.

Habitat:
Very moist or very dry, occasionally in pure stands.

Range:
Southern Quebec to Nova Scotia, south to central Florida, west to eastern Texas, and north to Minnesota.

Common Uses and Interesting Facts:

Prone to tent caterpillar attack as well as black knot. Black knot is a fungus that attacks plums and cherries, prevalent in Ohio. It mostly affects twigs, smaller branches, and the sources of the fruit, but can progress to the trunks. It causes he fruit to be hard and rotten.

Bark has some medicinal purposes. An extract is used as a sedative or tonic.

One of the most valuable forest trees. Used in furniture and interior decorated.

Used as an ornamental tree in urban environments due to its attractiveness, but the cherries easily stain concrete.

Leaves produce cyanide when damaged. When some animals eat a lot of fresh leaves or a few damaged ones, they can die.

Black cherry aphid is a parasite that lives in the bark during winter. When the cherry buds break, the aphid eggs hatch, and the newborns eat living tissues of the trees, then leave once matured, and find a new host. They feed on twigs, which prevents new leaves from forming the next year.

 

 


Another view of a cherry leaf.


Close-up view of the gland at the base of each cherry leaf.

Sources:

Photo credits: Vanessa Artman

Benvie, S. 2002. The encyclopedia of North American Trees. Firefly Books Ltd. 304 pages.

Harlow, W.M. 1942. Trees of the eastern and central United States and Canada. Dover Publications.

Jackson, M.T. 2004. 101 trees of Indiana. Indiana University Press. Bloomington, IN.

Little, E.L. 1998. National Audubon Society field guide to North American trees, eastern region. Knopf Publishers, New York. 714 pages.

 



The most distinctive feature of cherry trees is its dark shingle-like bark.


Cherry leaves are usually shiny or glossy.


Another view of cherry leaves.


Cherry flowers.


The cherry tree is the tree on the right. Its bark is darker
than any of the other trees in the forest.


Here the cherry tree is on the left side of the photo. Again,
its dark bark is distinctive compared to the other trees.